THE STORY OF A CROW.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCIX, Issue 11556, 18 April 1898, Page 2

THE STORY OF A CROW.

(Scribners Magazine.) How many of us have ever got to know a wild animal? Ido not mean merely to meet with one once or twice, or to have one in a cage, but to really know it for, a long time while it is wild, and to get an insight into its life and history. The trouble usually is to know one creature from his fellow. One fox or crow is so much like another that we cannot be sure that it really is the same next time we meet. But once in a while there arises an animal who is stronger or wiser than his fellows, who becomes a great leader, who is, as- we would say a genius; and if he is bigger or has some mark by which men can know him, he soon becomes famous in his country, and shows us that the life of a wild animal may be far more interesting and exciting than that of many human

beings. Of this class were Courtrand, the bobtailed wolf that terrorised the whole city of Paris for about ten years in the beginning of the fourteenth century; Gimpy, the lame grizzly bear that in two years ruined all the hog-raisers, and drove half the farmers out of business in the Upper Sacramento Valley;

LOBO, THE KING WOLF OP NEW MEXICO, that killed a cow every day for five years; and the Soehnee panther that in less than two years killed nearly three hundred human beings; and such also was Silverspot, whose history, so far as I could learn it, I shall now briefly toll. Silverspot was simply a wise old crow; his name was given because of the silvery white spot that was like a nickel, stuck on his right side, between the eye and the bill, and it was owing to this spot that I was able to know him from the other crows, and put together the parts of his history that came to my knowledge. Old Silverspot was the leader of a large band of crows that made their headquarters near Toronto, Canada, in Castle Prank, which is a pine-clad hill on the north-east edge of the city. This band numbered about two hundred, and, for reasons that I never understood, did not increase. In mild winters they stayed along the Niagara River; in cold winters they went much farther south. But each year, in the last week of February, old Silverspot would muster his followers and boldly cross the forty miles of open water that lies between Toronto and Niagara; not, however, in a straight line would he go, but always in a curve to the west, whereby he kept in sight of the familiar landmark of Dundas Mountain until the pine-clad hill itself came in view, EACH TEAR HE CAME WITH HIS TROOP, and for about six weeks took up his abode on the hill. Each morning thereafter the

crows set out in three bands to forage. One baud went south-east to Ashbridgo’s Bay; one went west up the Don; and one, the largest, wont north-westward up the ravine. The last old Silverspot led in person. Who led the others I never found out.

On calm mornings they flew high and straight away. But when it was "windy the band flew low, and followed the ravine for shelter. My windows overlooked the ravine, and it was thus that in 1885 I first noticed this old crow. I was a newcomer in the neighbourhood, but an old resident said to me then “ that there old crow has been a-flying up aud down this ravine for more than twenty years.” My chances to watch were in the ravine, and Silverspot doggedly clinging to the old route, though now it was hedged with houses and spanned by bridges, became a very familiar acquaintance. Twice each day in March and part of April, then again in the late summer and the fall, he passed and repassed, and gave me chances to see his movements aud hear his orders to hia bauds: and so, little by little, opened iry eyes to the, fact that the crows, though a little people, are of great wit,, a race of birds with a language and a social system that is WONDERFULLY HUMAN in many of its chief points, and in some is bettor carried out than our o ft’n. One day while watching I saw a crow crossing the Don Valley with something white in his beak. He flew to the mouth of the Eosedale Brook, then took a short flight to the Beaver Elm. There he dropped the white object, and looking about gave me a chance to recognise my old friend Silverspot. After a minute ha picked up the white thing—a shell—and walked over past the spring; and here, among the docks and the skunk-cabbages, be unearthed a pile of shells and other white, shiny things. He spread them out in the sun, turned them over, lifted them one by one in his beak, dropped them, nestled on them as though they were eggs, toyed with them, and gloated over them like a miser. This was his hobby, his weakness. He could not have explained why he enjoyed them, any more than ‘a boy can explain why he collects postage stamps, or a girl why she prefers pearls to rubiesbut his pleasure in th6m was very real ; and' after half an hour ho covered them all, including the new one, with earth and leaves, and flew off. I went at once to the spot and examined the hoard; there was about a hatful in all, chiefly white pebbles, clam-shells and some bits of tin, but there was also the handle of a china cup, which must have been THE GEM OF THE COLLECTION. That was the last time I saw them. Silverspot knew that I had found his treasures, and he removed them at once; where, I never knew. During the space that I watched him so closely he had many little adventures and escapes. He was once severely handled by a sparrowhawk, and often he was chased and worried by kingbirds. Not that these did him much harm, but they were such noisy pests that ho avoided their company as quickly as possible, just as a grown man avoids a conflict with a noisy and impndent small boy. He had SOME CRUEL TRICKS, too. He had a way of going the round of the small birds’ nests each morning to eat the new laid eggs, as regularly as a doctor visiting his patients. But we must not judge him for that, as it is just what we ourselves do to the hens in the barnyard. His quickness of wit was often shown. One day I saw him flying down the ravine with a large piece of bread in his bill. The stream below him was at this time being bricked over as a sewer. There was one part of two hundred yards quite finished, and, as he flew over the open water just above this, the bread fell from his bill, and was swept by the current out of sight into the tunnel. He flew down and peered vainly into the dark cavern, then, acting upon a happy thought, he flew to the down stream end of the tunnel, and awaited the reappearance of the floating bread,- as it was‘swept onward by the current he seized and bore it off in triumph. Silverspot was a crow of the world. He was truly a successful crow. He lived in a region that, though full of dangers, abounded with food. In the old, unrepaired nest he raised a brood each year with hia wife, whom, by the way, I never could distinguish, and when the crows again gathered together he was their acknowledged chief. '